by Ilana Berney
Endgame: The Calling is one of the most interesting books
I’ve ever read. Combining mystery, action and a ridiculously hard puzzle.
Endgame captures the attention of every ready from the very first sentence.
With twelve main characters the plot could seem
confusing, especially with chapters switching between points of view. However
the book is carefully and cleverly written meaning it flows smoothly and
minimises confusion.
The book contains reluctant allies and fierce rivals, all
competing to solve the puzzle first and save their race. This leads to secrets
being revealed and the world being thoroughly travelled. The ‘players’, as the
characters are called, travel from all the continents to China, then to Africa,
Europe and America in the search for the first piece of the puzzle.
Endgame is a novel with well-developed characters that
keep you entertained with surprising twists and turns in every chapter. The
words ‘hard to put down’ come to mind when I read this book and would
thoroughly recommend it to anyone searching for an engaging and exciting read.
I have to thoroughly disagree with you (and feel free to comment back to this reply) - I felt this was a terribly written book. For starters the writing style is incredibly dramatic (combined with present tense), which makes it simply difficult to read - but then the action events itself appear either random or unimaginative or both (fireballs from the sky with "thousands dying in flames", or a plane crash, or for some bizarre reason a woman giving birth on a bus), and his again generic descriptions of these events made it very un-gripping. The supposed puzzles were frequent pictures that made no sense and would have been cooler if they were designed in such a way that the reader could actually solve them. But worst of all I'd say was the strange and sudden relationship of the two lead characters, especially as Sarah (who's personality, like many characters, appeared to be a stereotype) had been completely devoted to one boy her entire life. Though the book had a couple of interesting ideas, it mostly seemed too attention grabbing and essentially trying to hard in the words it used, whilst not nearly focusing enough on plot (the start was far too slow, and little actually happens throughout the book). Sorry to make my point like this, but I really feel there are much better books of the same genre out there - each to their own however.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. The fact that this is written in various tenses is part of the intrigue. It may not be a grammatical classic (written more in the style of a movie perhaps) but the overall plot is fast paced and easy to read whilst including the twists and turns of a modern mystery. Each to their own as they say. This just wasn't for you
ReplyDeleteAs you say - each to their own. Whilst this may not be a grammatical classic and lack some sophistication, it's still a jolly good read!
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